Grand Rapids Press File PhotoFormer Grand Rapids Mayor Lyman Parks just before celebrating his 90th birthday.GRAND RAPIDS -- City flags were flying at half-mast this morning in memory of the Rev. Lyman S. Parks, who served as the city's first and only black mayor in the 1970s.

Rev. Parks, 92, died this morning at a suburban Chicago hospital. He was hospitalized this past weekend after suffering a stroke, according to his granddaughter, Grand Rapids City Clerk Lauri Parks.

He and his wife, Cleo, had been living at an independent living facility in Lisle, Ill. since spring, Lauri Parks said.

"Mayor Parks led this community through an extraordinary time of social change and with his calming presence and visionary leadership, saw us through to a new era of racial justice," Mayor George Heartwell said.

"He was the right man at the right time in the right place," said Carl Eschels, who served with Rev. Parks on the City Commission in the late 1960s. "He helped this community move towards accepting more diversity in its people."

Eschels said he and Parks had kept in touch, speaking as recently as last week. "He loved to talk about the political days in Grand Rapids."

Rev. Parks arrived in Grand Rapids from his native Indiana in 1966 as pastor of First Community AME Church.

In 1968, Rev. Parks sought his congregation's support to represent the 3rd Ward on the Grand Rapids City Commission.

He won the election by more than 1,000 votes, becoming the city's first black commissioner in a ward dominated by Republican-leaning whites who would give Richard Nixon 63 percent of the presidential vote later that year.

City commissioners appointed him to fill a mayoral vacancy three years later. Two years later, he won re-election, besting 10 other opponents.